RBS - the dumbest bank of the year ?

RBS will pay $100m to the U.S. federal and state banking regulators as punishment for using U.S. correspondent banks to conduct transactions with customers in Iran, Sudan and other countries subject to international sanctions.

Often, violations of the law are difficult for banking regulators to establish, because the evidence tends to be gray and open to interpretation. That doesn't seem to have been a problem in this instance.

According to a consent order released Wednesday by the New York State Department of Financial Services, RBS provided employees at its payment-processing centers in the U.K. with written instructions, containing 'a step by step guide on how to create and route U.S. dollar payment messages involving sanctioned entities through the United States to avoid detection'.